Diminishing the potency of a word

My dad taught me many good and true things. One of his concerns was the weakening the potency of words by deliberate misuse. Jon Snow, the anchor on Channel 4 news, calls people who request the wearing of Remembrance Day red poppies 'poppy fascists'. It may seem obtuse to move from the substantive point about whether or not the ultimate sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young men and women on our behalf should be memorialised each year, to the much more trivial one of using the label 'fascist' for every group of people we think are a little too keen on something, but humour me.

The fascist movements (for my purposes Communism is also fascism, but with different terminology) that came to the fore in Europe during the early 30's harboured many psychoses. When they took power their psychoses were then projected on to the rest of the world. Between fifty and sixty million people died, many of them murdered, before fascism was finally exterminated as a political creed in Europe. So to use the word fascist for those who are particularly keen on good nutrition for children (food fascists) or for those who are very over the top in their desire to protect children from accidents (health and safety fascists) drains that word of its power. I wish those who unreflectingly rob the word fascist of its potency would muster the mental strength to find some other description for the single-issue bores and the jolly-hockey-sticks home counties marms who insist they know whats best for us all. For one thing, I'd much rather have a country dominated by those well-intentioned if slightly blinkered folk than one dominated by the real fascists of our day, the islamists. And so would you if you have any wit whatsoever.

Possibly the worst abuse of the word fascist at the moment is the use of it to describe the Republicans in the US and those people in positions of power in the UK who are most engaged in the war on islamism. Interestingly, now that the Republicans have just lost control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, will the fascist label still be ubiquitously attached to them? Probably. As I always say, by their fruits ye shall know them. The intentions and good will of both Britain and America are evidenced in many places over many decades all over the world. Only the most ludicrous interpretation of the evidence would allow ourselves and the Americans to be deemed fascistic. There are real dangers in the misuse of words. When you can no longer describe something effectively, you lose the power to deal with that thing precisely and elegantly. Lets not do that to ourselves.